In January 2014 ESI organised a brainstorming in Paris with members of the European Commission's Directorate-General responsible for enlargement, diplomats from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with key experts and officials from the Balkans. In our invitation we set out this agenda:

"In this brainstorming at the Swedish Embassy in Paris the discussion will focus on the core practical question of how the annual progress reports can best promote reform efforts in candidate and potential candidate states:

Who reads the progress reports now? How are they now being used? How can they help reformers – inside the countries but also outside? How can they help change perceptions in such critical member states over time? How to be "strict and fair" and accessible? How can they set an agenda for debate as effectively as the OECD Pisa reports? How to produce and then use "roadmaps" for individual chapters that allow producing score cards of concrete annual progress? How can one improve the more general sections on political and economic criteria in the progress reports?"

Participants felt that this was the right moment for an initiative to revive the accession process by changing the annual progress reports in such a way as to better motivate civil servants, politicians and civil society in countries aspiring to membership. Participants also agreed that many sections of current progress reports were hardly read by anyone, and not understood even by diplomats who had the task of summarising them for their national parliaments. Progress reports should be clear, not vague.

"The paradox is that the EU has never needed a credible enlargement policy more than it does today: not just for Eastern Europe, but for the Balkans and Turkey as well.

At the same time, the EU – and the European Commission – struggle to keep enlargement credible even for countries where the promise was made years ago.

EU enlargement policy is only credible to accession countries – from Albania to Turkey – if it is seen to be fair. It is acceptable to publics in EU member states – from the Netherlands to Germany – only if it is seen to be strict."

"This proposal is informed by the ongoing success of strict, yet fair visa liberalisation processes, the OECD's Pisa assessments for education, and other experiences of credible assessments and rankings. This would involve the European Commission doing for each policy area (chapter) – and for each accession country - what it has done in the recent visa liberalisation process: produce one document that clearly sums up what the core requirements – the core acquis – are under each chapter that every accession candidate should meet. They could look like visa liberalisation roadmaps.

These requirements should focus on outcomes: not just to pass a law, but also to "pass a law, have a credible institution and implement it." They should be assessed annually in the progress reports for all seven countries. Some of this the Commission is already doing.

There is enormous power in credible, objective assessments to mobilise reformers and civil society in accession countries. This would also show when countries move backwards. It could help set the reform agenda and restore the trust of EU member states in European Commission evaluations. Building the institutions needed in many of these policy areas is also the best way to strengthen the rule of law – from public procurement policy to inspection services in the fields of industrial standards, environment or food safety.

For countries whose primary source of FDI lies in the EU and whose hope of catching up economically lies in exporting much more to the EU, the largest market in the world, making credible progress here is also a strong signal to investors. Finally, it would allow fair implementation of the "more for more" principle, as donors (and pre-accession funding) can be targeted on rewarding objectively assessed reform efforts in specific policy fields."

On 6 March 2014 Gerald spoke in a brainstorming on the EU accession process organised by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague. Participants included senior diplomats from the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg.

On 5 June 2014 Gerald presented ESI's proposal for future of progress reports in Skopje at an event organised by CRPM and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung on "Is enlargement over? And does it matter?" At the invitation of the Dutch ambassador Gerald also presented our proposals to European ambassadors.

On 12 June 2014 Gerald participated in the ECFR's annual Council Meeting in Rome and shared ESI's publications on the issue with many European policy makers.

"Today trust in enlargement policy is declining everywhere: in EU member states, in candidate countries, among those who govern and those in opposition. In the past five years opposition to enlargement has deepened in every single EU member state, old and new, rich and poor, those hit hard by the global economic crisis and those relatively unscathed.

A recent survey (autumn 2013) shows that an absolute majority of EU citizens oppose further enlargement (52 per cent). Opposition is even stronger among euro area respondents (60 per cent). The fall in support for enlargement is sharpest in traditionally pro-enlargement countries such as Italy (where opposition to enlargement increased by 22 percentage points) or Spain (21). The recent changes in Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are also dramatic.

Many people in EU member states question the central premises of the pre-accession process: that it is a powerful tool for transformation, capable of accelerating reforms in candidate countries so they become fit for accession in the foreseeable future. And can enlargement really be a win-win policy that makes the EU stronger without such a transformation?"

How could a set of meaningful economic indicators help establish clearly whether a country is moving towards being a "functioning market economy", and can thus be considered meeting the Copenhagen economic criteria? How can such indicators be defined in a way that is considered both sufficiently strict in EU member states and fair in accession countries … and which both inspires the right policy debates in countries and allows for comparisons, thus encouraging positive regional competition and mutual learning?

How can such an effort be supported by a pilot project in the field of Statistics (chapter 18) and an improvement of the annual monitoring of progress by the Commission? How to best draw up a roadmap setting out the acquis in this field, modelled on the visa liberalisation roadmaps developed by DG Home, which had such a strong impact on reform efforts?

The aim of the workshop is to find ways to increase the trust in the enlargement process in EU member states, while finding ways to help policy makers encourage reform efforts irrespective of the formal status of countries in the EU accession process.

Gerald also met with Swedish government ministers. On 3 October 2014, he travelled to Visby for the annual Visby conference organised by the Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation. Participants included Carl Bildt, Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Boris Nemtsov, Former Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia, and others.

On 18 November 2014 Gerald presented our ideas at three events on EU-Turkey relations in Ankara (at TOBB University of Economics and Technology) and Istanbul organised by the Istanbul Policy Center (IPC).

On 2 February 2015 Gerald went to Stockholm for a series of meetings with Stats Sweden, SIDA and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to discuss how to develop ESI's proposal for the reform of the enlargement process.

On 12 February 2015 Gerald and Adnan presented these ideas for feedback in Sarajevo to different representatives of civil society, politicians and diplomats.

"Every year in its annual progress reports the European Commission discusses corruption in all seven accession countries. It notes that even the best laws, the shiniest anti-corruption agencies and the longest anti-corruption action plans are only means to an end. The end of anti-corruption policies should be impact and measurable results.

But can the incidence of corruption in different walks of social life be fairly established? Can the impact of anti-corruption reforms be measured? In a new discussion paper we argue that the European Commission has a very powerful tool at its disposal which has not yet been used with the accession countries."

Throughout this time ESI analysts met many times with senior EU officials and EU parliamentarians in Brussels as well as with diplomats and ministers from EU member states in Berlin, London, Paris and Vienna.